Another View: After terrible tornado, a call for shelters

The pictures make you wonder how anyone lived through the monster tornado that devastated an Oklahoma City suburb Monday.

Neighborhoods scraped to the foundations. A bowling alley's roof torn off, the glossy wooden lanes gleaming like exposed flesh. A medical center entrance blocked by a pile of battered cars. And, most heartbreaking, a school reduced to rubble.

Given the extent and power of the storm, the official death toll, 24, seems remarkably low. But the seven deaths at Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore suggest more can be done to protect children, and adults, caught in a tornado's path.

Such tornadoes are a springtime fact of life in America's heartland. Storms that sweep unobstructed across the broad, flat central plains collide with warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to produce more tornadoes here than in any other nation-1,000 a year on average throughout the country, the vast majority in an area in the central United States called Tornado Alley. Canada is a distant second with just 100 twisters per year. And the strongest tornadoes, those of EF-3 or higher on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, are quite rare outside the United States.

All that violent weather has forced Americans to get better at survival.

Advances in Doppler radar and early warning systems, along with safety drills and sturdier construction, helped cut the tornado death rate from an average of 1.8 per million people in 1925 to 0.1 per million in 2000.

Forecasts and sirens undoubtedly saved countless lives in Moore, Okla. The National Weather Service issued a warning more than 30 minutes before the tornado struck the town. That gave residents time to take shelter, and nearly everyone seemed to know what to do-get underground if possible, or retreat to interior rooms.

But the two schools hard hit in Moore, including the one where seven children died, didn't have reinforced tornado shelters like those in more than 100 other schools around the state. The shelters are no guarantee against death and injury, but they certainly improve the odds. For the states with the most average tornadoes a year-Texas (155), Kansas (96) and Oklahoma (62)-counting on luck seems a risky approach.

The tornado in Moore-an EF-5 with winds up to 210 mph-wasn't even the strongest to hit this same suburban community. A twister that struck the town almost exactly 14 years ago reached an unimaginable 318 mph.

With the death count still in flux and funerals still to come, it's way too early to worry about disaster-relief politics. Better to help the people of Moore recover-and hope that the rest of the tornado season will be as quiet as this one was until a cruel third Monday in May.

USA Today

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Another View: After terrible tornado, a call for shelters

The pictures make you wonder how anyone lived through the monster tornado that devastated an Oklahoma City suburb Monday.